


Scatter Our Ashes Into Stardust

by bluestockng



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: A break from your regularly schedules rebelcaptain, Angst, Canon Compliant, Emotional, Everyone is Dead, F/M, Future, Hurt, M/M, Mon Mothma's thoughts on Rogue One, Post-Battle of Scarif
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-03
Updated: 2017-03-03
Packaged: 2018-09-28 03:37:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10069436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluestockng/pseuds/bluestockng
Summary: Rogue Oneis alive and whole, or at least that's how Mon Mothma, sole survivor of the Rebel Alliance, likes to imagine them.





	

On that halcyon day on Scarif, the universe lost its greatest heroes. Most people, however, never even learned the story. Politicians on Coruscant didn’t raise toasts in their memory ten years later, moisture farmers on Tatooine didn’t write and sing songs of their legends. Quickly, their names were forgotten by history. Grander heroes, who survived their adventures and lived to retell their stories, filled the void that _Rogue One_ left behind. Their names would echo across millennia: Leia Organa, Han Solo, Luke Skywalker. The names of _Rogue One_ passed quietly into oblivion. 

There were a few who remembered the sacrifices they made, but even in time their recollections faded. New heroes rose with each generation and the deaths of six forgotten souls washed away, like the ashes of Jedha. Their loss was so small compared to the billions who died before the Empire was brought to its knees. Few cared to remember that the galaxy’s greatest victory began as a fracture formed by Rogue One.  
In her old age, Mon Mothma remembered. She sat most nights on a rickety rocking chair on her balcony porch, nestled under a warm blanket. Mon Thoma tilted her head and gazed up with her rheumy, unseeing eyes to the stars and the heavens above (if they even existed). The memories, long pushed away, would flood back like the tide of the great salt seas. The passing years turned her lustrous copper hair to a brittle stark white, her face aged gracefully into laugh lines and worry creases. In these moments, she recalled those who remained forever young.

Enveloped by the darkness, separated by decades of war and peace, she’d let her mind wander to those six brave rebels who had carried her vision for a better galaxy with them. On cool nights like this, she could almost feel their presence around her, as if their spirits lingered to keep her company. Mon Motha pictured them, captured in her mind as last she’d seen them: 

Chirrut, unusually humorous for a monk, ready with quick comebacks. Intensely loyal and only made stronger by his blindness, despite losing his home on Jedha. She regretted never speaking with him: perhaps he could have given her wisdom about her own blindness had he survived. 

Baze, devoted to Chirrut, what kind of love inspired such faithfulness? Men fought and died for Mon Mothma’s cause, but she didn’t think anyone had loved her so truly in her entire life. Even though he had doubted the Alliance and the power of the Force, he had still followed Chirrut into battle willingly. 

Kaytoo, a true anomaly, who had always treated her with grudging respect, even when she had sent him into harm’s way. He’d been ecstatic to tell her how her plans might fail and what he would do to her should Cassian be killed. Even now, the hint of a smile played upon her face at the thought. The feeling of smiling was now nearly unknown to her. 

She thought of Bodhi. True, she’d only met him briefly, but he had spoken as passionately about Galen Erso as his daughter had. Too often, Mon Mothma had grateful enough to the deserters whose conviction and redemption fueled her own army. 

With a twinge of grief, next she imagined Cassian Andor. Before his death, he’d been one of the Alliance’s most stalwart and skilled field agents. More than that, however, she remembered the darkness and pain in his eyes whenever he returned from a mission. She’d been grateful for his return, of course, but she’d devalued him as a person, as a man capable of great sorrow and great bravery. She and Davits had sent him into harm’s way, and he never complained or turned away. He took every job, even at the cost of his own humanity. 

Finally, she thought of Jyn Erso. She thought of the shattered, damaged, yet brilliant young woman she’d forced out of obscurity and into a war. Mon Mothma had placed a galaxy’s worth of problems and hopes onto her shoulders, and despite her misgivings and her own sordid past, Jyn Erso rose to the occasion. She kept running and fighting and burning, even when it cost her everyone she’d ever loved. Even now, Mon Mothma was struck by the intensity of Jyn’s strength and uncanny ability to wrench everyone into the orbit of her gravity. A person of Jyn Erso’s passion might be born into the galaxy once in a thousand years, and Mon Mothma counted herself fortunate to have shared some time, however brief, in her presence. Jyn Erso blazed bright as a solar fire snuffed out too soon. Mon Mothma, lost in contemplating her own heartache, regretted cutting short the life of a woman who would have been extraordinary, if given the chance.

Together, they’d charged to their inevitable deaths for ideals and dreams that even Mothma had come to doubt later in life. What was the use of a better galaxy if the people who vanquished the old world did not survive to build the new one? Mon Mothma told herself that in a kinder universe—which must exist far beyond the sky and the planets and even the Force—the crew of _Rogue One_ found the happiness they earned, but never knew, in life. 

In her mind, she imagined them differently. She wanted to think of them with lives and families. She wanted them to survive to see the morning. She wanted them to tell their own stories, especially now that her voice was too feeble and her body too brittle to do it herself. Baze and Chirrut would return to Jedha and rebuild whatever was left, creating a memorial to those who died, civilian and Gerrera partisan alike. Bodhi would stay with the Alliance and train new recruits, maybe even deserters like himself. Using the words of Galen Erso, he’d inspire and encourage them to right the wrongs of their pasts. 

Kaytoo, the quarrelsome droid, might actually get that blaster he so desperately wanted.

Jyn and Cassian? Mon Mothma had always been a romantic, but she likes to think that she hadn’t simply imagined the connection between the two. They were both rough, angry souls, tossed together by circumstance or by fate. They hadn’t liked each other at the first meeting, but the next time she witnessed them together, he’d lent her his strength and support from across the room, his eyes never leaving her face. She would have liked to see their partnership flourish. The way he had looked at her, she couldn’t have imagined that, could she? Maybe they’d held each other just one before they died, maybe they’d been together before their bodies were ripped cruelly and far too early from the world. Mon Mothma would have died a hundred deaths to give them more time. Wiping a tear away, Mon Mothma chastised herself for growing too sentimental with age. 

It would be a kinder universe, one in which true heroes won the dayand the darkness defeated, never to return. Their blood never would have soaked into the sand of Scarif’s beaches. Their skin never would have been burned in the blast. Their bodies would not have been broken and rent apart and incinerated into ash. They would be whole. She only wished that she could join them there.

She rocked in the chair, back and forth, back and forth, listening to the creak and the moan of the boards and her bones. She waited patiently every night to depart from the world. Mon Mothma had felt ready for years: she’d outlived all of her peers and anyone she might have called “friend.” One by one, she witnessed them suffer and die. She too, wished to fade away and leave the creation of a better galaxy to the new heroes. 

Someone, however, needed to live and keep the flame alive for _Rogue One_. It was her blessing and her curse, the gift of a long and happy life. Perhaps the Force had granted her extra years to atone for the year she took from those who followed her. In repentance, Mon Mothma carried their pain as well as their faith with her.

How she wished she could thank them for all their sacrifices. Now, she could send up a silent prayer and hope that the Force would carry her words to them, wherever they rested. Knowing that death comes for all, Mon Mothma wrote her memoirs each night until she could no longer hold a pen. She couldn’t let their heroism die with her. She dedicated page after page to their exploits, to what little she knew about them. Some editor would find these notes and censor them, attributing the stories to the ramblings of a half mad woman. But, she’d meant every word. 

Running her weathered hands over the roughhewn wood of the balcony, she conjured up the feeling of Yavin 4, all those years ago. She felt the smothering humidity and she sensed the stench of its jungle flora. The wood felt like the stone of the ancient ziggurat beneath her fingertips. She listened to the wind and the crickets from her perch and amongst them she could almost the voices of pilots, spies, and rebels, creating a tranquil yet sobering night music. Mon Mothma wanted to beg them for absolution. 

_Forgive me._

The wind picked up, whistling through the trees as if six voices whispered back to her:

_We do._

With a sign of contentment, she closed her eyes for the last time and waited serenely while her heartbeat pattered slower and slower. Drifting off into unending sleep, she dreamed that she joined them. Unbeknownst to her, as the stars shone above in the blackness of space, the ashes of _Rogue One_ scattered across a thousand star systems; covering everyone they touched in stardust.

**Author's Note:**

> A little different from what I usually write, but hopefully there's still enough Rebelcaptain? This idea was rattling around in my brain, so i decided to work it out and post :)


End file.
